Pour forth your strength into my heart That I might stand strong! Encircle with healing love those Who persecute me through fear! And say to my soul, "I am with you always."
Enjoying the Friends of Silence monthly newsletter? Now you can sign up to receive a free daily quote in your inbox each morning taken from more than 39 years of 422 newsletters and 5,600 quotes on silence and the contemplative path.
All words have a history. But some are particularly interesting to explore when it comes to psychology—because they're directly born from it. How many times have you been mesmerized by something, so captured by it that it was like you were in a trance? The word "mesmerize" dates back to an 18th century Austrian physician named Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815). He established a theory of illness that involved internal magnetic forces, which he called animal magnetism. (It would later be known as mesmerism.)
~ Margarita Tartakovsky, MS, from the article "Psychology's History of Being Mesmerized" on psychcentral.com